This article has been retracted at the request of the Editors of the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science as fraudulent results have been found in this article and other publications in Elsevier journals by the same authors, namely

– Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 337 (2009) 122–130

– Inorganic Chemistry Communications 12 (2009) 1145–1149

– Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 101 (2010) 122–133

– Process Safety and Environmental Protection 88 (2010) 53–61

– Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids 70 (2009) 1413–1421

– Applied Surface Science 256 (2009) 702–709

– Inorganic Chemistry Communications 11 (2008) 20–23

– Inorganic Chemistry Communications 12 (2009) 1107–1111

– Journal of Hazardous Materials 172 (2009) 507–514

– Journal of Hazardous Materials 171 (2009) 514–523

– Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 338 (2009) 30–39

Publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is an important building-block in the development of science. Elsevier has defined policies and ethical guidelines that have to be obeyed by authors and editors and Elsevier takes its duties of guardianship over the scholarly record extremely seriously.

The Editors of the Elsevier journals involved found that the allegations of fraud are conclusive and they have decided that these papers should be retracted from the journals.

We spoke with Diana Aga, the new editor of the hazmat journal. She just came on board the masthead, so didn’t have much to say about the case. But she did add that another retraction is on the way, although she referred us to a colleague for more information. We tried to reach that person, but didn’t succeed.

Thomas Reller, a top spokesman for Elsevier, agreed to dig into the matter for us but said it would take some time to contact the proper people. Still, we appreciate his willingness to help, and will update with anything we hear.

We reached senior author Airoldi, of the State University of Campinas, by email. According to the researcher, sometime last year a young scientist at in Portugal accused Airoldi’s group of having fabricated nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) images in the 11 papers, particularly for carbon and silica. The spectra used in the images was wrong, said the scientist, whom Airoldi called “an expert in this technique.” Airoldi said he was “only a user of the technique,” and had “never used this wrong way.”

The papers were among approximately 21 that Airoldi wrote with Guerra, then a former graduate student, who is now at Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso. We have attempted to reach him for comment but have yet to receive a reply. Airoldi, for his part, claims to have more than 400 publications, and says he invited the Portuguese scientist to scrutinize them for evidence of fraud but received no response from the whistleblower.

Airoldi said he stands by the work. He defended himself and Guerra, saying they did “not fabricate the spectra.” The Portuguese researcher, he claimed, pushed Elsevier “in [the] direction” of a fraud judgement.

Meanwhile, he said by email:

Now I am in bad condition in my University and maybe some restrictions will reach me.

We’d spoken with the senior author on those papers, Claudio Airoldi, who defended himself and his colleagues and denied that the NMR images had been manipulated.

Today, we heard from Tom Reller, vice president for global corporate relations at Elsevier, who offered a different version of events.

Here’s what Reller had to say, straight from his email:

After we received the complaint, this case was investigated by the handling editor of the article in JCIS [the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science]. He conducted a thorough investigation and involved three external reviewers. PDFs of the article published in JCIS and the other journals involved were sent to the reviewers. The reviewers reported that it was clear that the NMR results were manipulated, the NMR spectra were not authentic, and concluded that this was a case of fraud. This conclusion was also supported by the handling editor of JCIS. The results of the investigation were shared and discussed with other publishers involved, and we also involved our legal counsel.

After the initial investigation by the editor and external reviewers, the findings were sent to the authors. The authors were asked to send us their original measured NMR data, which they did together with their response to the allegations. It was concluded by a reviewer that the original NMR data included with the Authors’ response did not appear to be equivalent to the data presented in the published papers.

The investigation is concluded so far as we’re concerned.

Clearly, this account doesn’t jibe with Airoldi’s protestations, and we’re not sure we see a way for both descriptions to be true. We’ll continue to update with what we hear.